simulator (Re: [Icfp04-discuss] three liberal arts)

[Andreas Bogk]

Laurent Desnogues <laurent.desnogues at wanadoo.fr> writes:

> I tested that after the contest.  In fact when you
> look at the instructions, you see you can encode
> them using 64 bits for 2 of them and 32 bits for
> the remaining.  I quickly coded that and it halved
> the data memory requirement as opposed to a simple-
> minded structured containing all fields.
>
> And the result is... no gain :-)

You see, this is the reason why I don't mind having writing the
simulator as part of the contest.  It's not just about coming up with
some clever strategy for the ants, it's also about management of
development resources.  Like deciding whether or not you invest more
time into improving your simulator performance, when you could already
be thinking about ant strategies.  Or whether you mind copying&pasting
some ant code ten times, or rather spend three more hours improving
your ant definition language.

Andreas